Ah, the end of an era. I wanted to get my thesis hardbound in style (50,000+ words and 230 pages of pure joy) and go through it with someone to iron out any problems that may arise rather than just doing the whole shebang online, so I went to CB&W which came highly recommended by a lot of people.
The service here is fantastic and the whole process went smoothly. They have display copies of everything, a comprehensive chart of London University binding conventions, a range of different paper types, several different colours, lettering examples, and the staff go through your work with you before you process it just to flag up any potential difficulties. I also spent a good half an hour trying to find out what format my supervisor wanted (do I want the spine writing going up or down the spine?). Extremely helpful! In total, it was £72 per copy of my thesis for a two-day service including printing (70 colour pages) - it's a bit extra for 200+ pages. Checking with some other binders, the price was pretty good, so no complaints here.
The finished article is nice. I think I would've preferred slightly heavier weight paper, however, I was told it wasn't possible seeing as it's over 200 pages. Fair dos. Unfortunately, the printing isn't quite up to the standard that I expected with the colour images suffering in terms of quality (colour dotting). It's a shame as everything else was great, but the images turned out quite a bit better in my pre-viva copies ordered through another online service. It may be worth checking with them what their printing options are if you have a lot of images in your document, or alternatively you can have it printed elsewhere for them to bind. Overall though, I'd definitely come here again if I needed things bound, if only for the service alone. read more